FROM EIR DAILY ALERT

Lavrov: U.S. Opts for ‘Confrontationist’ Strategic Policy Instead of Dialogue and Cooperation

Jan. 20, 2018 (EIRNS)—In a wide-ranging press conference yesterday in New York, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov took aim at what he called the U.S.'s "regrettable" strategic policy toward Russia and China which, "instead of relying on international law," the U.S. feels it has to prove its leadership through "confrontational concepts and strategies." Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov made similar remarks yesterday as well.

Russia is ready for dialogue, Lavrov said, to discuss military doctrine just as it’s been done in the past "when military people from both countries were building trust." There are many sober-minded people, he underscored, who understand that "strategic stability should be maintained, and all risks to it eliminated." But, he warned, this is impossible without U.S.-Russia cooperation.

The National Security Strategy, released Dec. 18, 2017, names China as the number-one "aggressive" economic power, followed by Russia as second in line, Lavrov pointed out. Thus, together with China, apparently, "we’re imploding the international system from the inside" and threatening the post-World War II world order, "ostensibly created by the U.S. and its allies after World War II." In reality, Lavrov went on, the former Soviet Union contributed greatly to the establishment of that world order, forged by the United Nations.

Lavrov also addressed the U.S. role in northern Syria where, RT reports, he said that U.S. forces were "seriously involved in creating alternative government bodies on a vast part of the Syrian territory." This, he said, contradicts the U.S.’s own oft-stated obligations, "on maintaining the sovereignty and the territorial integrity of Syria."

Washington’s inconsistency on Syria "is quite characteristic of modern U.S. diplomacy," Lavrov stated, including the reasons they are in Syria "and the actions of the coalition which they command." He said on many occasions he had discussed Russia’s concerns with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson about U.S. actions in Syria. Although Tillerson has told him the United States is only in Syria to fight ISIS, "it now appears that the U.S. has some more long-term plans." Thus, Lavrov said, "we will have to take this into account and look for solutions that won’t allow the destruction of Syrian sovereignty."